A bizarre plant which produces both tomatoes and potatoes, providing a 'veg
plot in a pot', has been launched in the UK.

It sounds like something from a science fiction film, but a plant which produces both potatoes and tomatoes has been launched in the UK.

The ‘TomTato’ can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes above ground, while beneath the soil it produces white potatoes that are suitable for boiling, roasting or turning into chips.

Horticultural mail order company Thompson & Morgan, which is selling the plants for £14.99 each, described their new product as a “veg plot in a pot”.

The hybrid plants are not a product of genetic engineering, but are each individually hand-grafted. Like potatoes, tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which makes them compatible for grafting.

Grafted potato/tomato plants have been around for decades, including from some small British nurseries, but Thompson & Morgan say this is the first time the plants have been widely produced commercially in the UK.

Paul Hansord, horticultural director at the company, said he first had the idea for the plant 15 years ago in the US, when he visited a garden where someone had planted a potato under a tomato plant as a joke.

"It started me thinking about whether it was feasible to do this in reality. I parked the idea until four or five years ago in Italy, when I visited a company involved in the commercial grafting business. It didn't work out with that company but then I was in Holland and found another company willing to give it a try."

Trials ran for three years before the results were deemed successful, and the company says it can now produce up to 34,000 plants annually.

Mr Hansord said it was "very difficult to achieve the TomTato because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work - it is a very highly-skilled operation.

"They start off joined together by a plastic clip, then the clip pops off as they grow and they're transferred into a 9cm pot and grow normally."

The plants can be grown either outside or inside, as long as they are in a large pot or bag. Thompson & Morgan refused to disclose which varieties of tomato and potato they had used, for fear of being imitated, but said that the cherry tomatoes were far sweeter than those available in supermarkets.

A similar product, dubbed the 'Potato Tom', was launched in garden centres in New Zealand this week, but Mr Hansord said this was a coincidence.

'Double-crop' plants like the TomTato could be extremely useful in the future, as they help populations grow more food in smaller spaces. A few years ago, a prison in Kenya trialled grafted tomato-potato plants, which led to local farmers also trying the technique. A prison official said the plant helped locals “save on space, time and labour without affecting the quality of their produce”.